Benelli's Elle: Unfortunate Souls MC Book One

by Debbie Mitchell

  “What costume do you want?” Noni asks me, and the three of us walk down the aisles. I wander off to another aisle and I see Lucky and he hands me an arm full of costume stuff and shhh’s me to keep him a secret. He then turns me and gently shoos me to go back to the other two. He’s so weird sometimes, he laughed and ran away, I don’t know what that means but I take the stuff to Noni and Papa.

  “Here ya go,” and I throw my haul into the cart.

  They look at the cart, then at each other, then at the cart, then at me before stuttering, “Are you sure that’s what you really want?”

  “Yep, this is the one I want, it’s perfect!” as I jump up and down in excitement, “Now, how about that ice cream?”

  Papa laughs and picks me up in his big, old arms, “I think you will look great, honey bear, now you just need a pumpkin,” and he grabs one as we are heading towards the checkout.

  “What’s that for?”

  “For you to put candy in when you go trick or treating,” Noni says, “you know, when you knock on doors and say trick or treat and people give you candy.”

  “Shut the front door! People give you candy when you knock on doors with this pumpkin thingy?”

  “They sure do honey, but you have to say trick or treat,” Papa says. I think he’s fibbing but I shrug my shoulders and go with it, sounds too easy to me.

  We get to the ice cream place and I want to try this sucker out, but they made me leave it in the truck. What the hell! These grownups give me a thing to carry around and say trick or treat, but they won’t let me use it. It worked out okay though because they gave me ice cream anyway and this stuff is the bomb.

  We stop by the clubhouse after the ice cream and I beg them to let me carry this orange thing; I want to try this magic candy thing out for myself. I knock on the door and this tall, skinny guy opens it so I do my job, “trick or treat,” and hold this thing out. The dude looks down at me and up at Papa so I say it again, “I SAID, trick or treat,” and I push the orange thing at the guy.

  He leans over my head because I’ve got that sucker blocked and he whispers to Papa, “Um, boss, I don’t have any candy, Halloween’s not for another week.”

  “Fireball, I don’t care what you have to do, find something to put in her pumpkin, now,” Papa growls at the man. I guess he scared him because he started reaching in his pockets and putting stuff in it. Noni and I head to the kitchen while Papa goes to do something and I dump my stuff on the table and check out my haul. I’ve got a key, an open package of gum, and she counts the money for me and I got $11.47, and a pocket knife! Hey, I like this trick or treating gig.

  “Noni, I’m going to see what else I can get,” I say and jump off my chair and take off towards doors.

  “Okay, but stay in the clubhouse,” she says and laughs, “I’m going to give Fireball back his key and pocketknife though.”

  I kick my foot at an imaginary rock, “Okay, fine, but I’m keeping the money and the gum.”

  I run to a door and knock and daddy answers so I say “trick or treat” again and hold out this orange bucket with a face. He goes back to his desk and opens it and pulls out a Little Debbie snack cake and puts it in there. “Thank you,” I tell him and run to the next door down the hall, but he hurries up and grabs me before the door opens, “What’d ya do that for?”

  “Yeah, I think maybe we should wait for Halloween sweetie, not every door needs to be opened here,” he tells me. I don’t know what he means by that, but I tell him okay, anyway.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Benelli

  “Hey, Benelli, you got a sec?” Virus asks.

  “Yeah, what’s up?”

  “I can’t get very far on adoption without a birth certificate, any way we can go check her house for it?”

  “I don’t know if Brenna knows her address, or if it was a rental or what, but we can give it a shot.”

  I call and ask Brenna if she knows her old address, I’m going to guess she lives in Devil’s Backbone since that’s where the Vengeful Demons are located. She tells me that it’s a green trailer on what she thinks is Pencil Sharpener Avenue. I have to laugh and try to think like a five-year-old and it dawns on me, “Pennsylvania Avenue?”

  “That’s what I said, silly.”

  “Okay honey, can I talk to mommy again?”

  When I hear Elle get on the phone, I tell her that Virus and I are going to go find her old house and try to come up with a birth certificate and she wishes me luck.

  Virus sets the GPS to the street we are looking for and we head that way. It was pretty easy to pick out the one that was hers. There was only one green trailer on that street. It was a beat up old place that had to be from the early 70s; the grass was so bare we kicked up dust as we walked. When we knocked and no one answered we tried the door and to our surprise, it was unlocked. When we entered the smell of rotted food and other items came from the sink and overflowing trash can. The livingroom and kitchen were all open together, threadbare olive carpeting covering the floor. We decided to start at opposite ends of the trailer. In the back bedroom where I am, I spot a small file cabinet that’s in the doorless closet. I kick away the dirty laundry that’s in front of it and try the drawers. Of course, those are locked. I start looking around for key and remember spotting a key hook in the kitchen. I know it can’t be that easy, but before I use my good knife on the thing, I’d try the keys for shits and giggles.

  Virus hears me and comes out to the bedroom on his end of the trailer saying he had no luck and I told him about the file cabinet. We decide to both check it out since there is probably no luck finding the document we need anywhere else. Grabbing the keys off the hook and heading back to the bedroom, he starts looking through drawers until I can get it popped open.

  The first drawer he pulls is stuck on something, so he reaches his hand in there to move it around. Luckily, he did, because it was a loaded gun and with one more pull would have sent off directly towards him. “Brenna’s parents were idiots,” Virus tells me over his shoulder and shows me the gun. I shake my head in disgust as to the hand this little girl was dealt the first five years of her life and vow to make all the rest amazing. This time when he pulled on the drawer it easily came out, all the way out to the floor with the contents falling everywhere. “Bingo!” he calls out and I look over again after trying the last key I had, to no avail, and pulling out my pocketknife.

  “What’d you find?”

  “Here, try this,” and tosses me key he found in the hidden part of the dresser. He also found a small stack of papers, “hey, don’t worry about it, I found birth certificates.”

  I stop what I’m doing and step over to him, “Here’s Brenna’s,” and he hands it over to me. Virus looks puzzled while looking at another birth certificate and then looks at me, “Um, Ben, what was your mom’s name again?”

  “Barbie, well Barbara Jean Neroni, her maiden name was Mifflington, why?”

  “You might want to take a look at this,” he says and hands me the second birth certificate.

  It’s birth certificate that I’m assuming belonged to Frodo. The age is about right being about 5 years older than me, though I didn’t know Frodo’s real name. It says it was a male named David Carter; the mother being Barbara Jean Mifflington and the father was, wait one fucking minute, I do know that name, Curtis Carter, that’s Chains’ actual name. My mom had a kid with Chains?

  Frodo was my brother? There is no fucking way that piece of shit was any relation to me. “This stay between you and me, okay? No telling anyone, not even Remington, I need to talk to dad,” I say and we get ready to leave, but something is pulling me back in there. I feel like even though I have what I came here for, my gut tells me to check the locked file cabinet, anyway. I hand the birth records over to Virus and tell him to hang out by the bikes for a minute. It’s probably nothing, but I turn the key in the lock and slowly open the first of two drawers.

  There are a bunch of file folders and I pull one out that ha
s papers attached to girls’ pictures. On the sheet it had information such as town, school, home address, things she did at certain times and on what days, like piano lessons on Wednesday 3:30-4:00. It also had a line that made little sense:

  Picked up 9/11/02-Delivered 9/18/02 $2500

  I started flipping through more of the sheets in the folder, each having a girl’s picture attached. Some had different pick up dates but everything in these folder had delivered: 9/18/02 and a dollar amount. Some were higher, some were lower, but they all said delivered. I close that folder and open up another, same things but different delivery dates. They’ve been kidnapping and selling girls off for years! The whole top drawer of the file cabinet had separate folders like this, filed by delivery date. I know that Frodo wasn’t involved in all of these because he would be too young, but why have them? The only thing I can come up with is Chains kept them at his “sons” house for safety. Maybe he thought someone was on to him? I open my phone and call Virus telling him to come back in here, I can’t even pry myself away to go out and tell him, like they would evaporate if I took my eyes off of them.

  I show him what I’ve found and his reply is “Man, this is too fucked up, we’re going to have to get these to the cops. Also, before you protest, and I know you will say this is our new gig, it’s not, not this part of it. We’ve got a lot on our plates right now and we can’t do it all, hunting down these girls that are who knows where now, we can’t do it all. Let’s the cops handle this one Ben, if we show then that we are on their side it will go a long way down the line when we do need them.”

  I lower my head knowing he’s right I’ve got my wedding coming up, a new daughter we are trying to adopt, which is why we were here in the first place, we just bought the woman’s home, Elle’s mom just moved here and she’s setting up her shop, as much as I want to be the hero, I need to pass that torch on to someone else.

  “You’re right, I know you’re right, do you know anyone on the force we can trust?” I ask. I mean, we aren’t on the wrong side of the law, but we tend to handle things our own way and not get them involved. They probably wouldn’t be too keen on how we handle things, case in point, taking out the Vengeful Demons that, according to the news, was blamed on a meth lab explosion.

  “Yeah, I’ve got someone in mind,” he says and scrolls on his phone. “Could I speak to detective Cagney?” I look at him puzzled but as soon as the other person answers it all comes clear, “Sara, hey this is Virus, I mean, Dean,” he takes a breath and pauses but I know what’s coming and chuckle, “Winchester,” he gives me a dirty look. “No, Sam isn’t with me smart ass, and yes, I may have caught some demons, Vengeful Demons,” he says with a snarl. Apparently, at the name of the outlaw biker club, whoever was on the other end started to take him seriously, “Yeah, you need to see this in person. Can you meet me at the old, green trailer on Pennsylvania? Yeah, the gangrene colored one,” and he laughs, “Okay, I’ll see you in 10.” He ends the call and says, “guess I should’ve given us time to come up with a reason why we were here in the first place, my bad, any brilliant ideas?” he looks at me hopefully.

  “Well, I can see your mind was on your dick, asshole. Since we are handing them pretty much everything anyway, I guess I tell them we found Brenna, but not at the silo. When she asks why we are here, let me handle that part,” I say as I try to think fast. I know the entire process of adopting her would be easier with the authorities involved. I just hope they don’t take her away from me, even if it’s temporary.

  Not long after, a dodge charger pulls up and out walks an extremely hot detective getting out of the car. I look at my friend and just shake my head and smile at him. She walks up to us and holds out her hand to shake mine, “Detective Cagney.”

  “Detective, I’m Matteo Neroni, and you know my friend,” I shake her hand and I grin and motion towards Virus.

  All the professionalism leaves her and her face brightens, “Dean, if you wanted to see me, all you had to do was call,” and winks at him.

  “Excuse me, I need to make a call,” and I step away to one, give them some privacy and two, give Elle and dad a heads up about the possibility of someone coming to check on Brenna before I’m able to get back.

  As much as we have grown fond of that little girl and would fight anyone that tries to take her away from us, Elle agrees that it’s the right way to go about it and we brainstorm ideas as to how we came across the little girl whose parents are both dead. When I talk to dad, I mention mom’s name on what I’m guessing is Frodo’s birth certificate, and the phone goes silent. “Dad?” I ask.

  “Your mom was right,” he finally says on the other end.

  “What are you talking about? Are you really telling me Brenna’s dad, the man that raped Elle and that we killed, really my half-brother?” I ask, hoping and praying that it’s not true.

  “It’s a really long story, but yes, it’s true. I’ll tell you what I know when you get home.”

  “Dad, don’t tell Elle anything. I don’t know how she would take it knowing I was related to him.”

  “You have my word, son,” and I end the call.

  “Excuse me, Mr Neroni, can I have a word with you?” Sara Cagney asks from where she’s still standing with Virus. Luckily, there is no way she heard any of my conversations.

  “Yes, of course,” I tell her and start to walk back to the pair.

  “I was explaining to her how you had heard about your half-brother and his wife’s death and came to check on your niece, Brenna, as soon as you found out. I also told her how you and your future wife took her in and how we came to look for her birth certificate,” Virus gives me a quick, knowing look and I am grateful for the info.

  “Yeah, that wasn’t obvious AT ALL, dude,” the detective says and elbows Virus in the gut, “you’re lucky you’re my friend or I would say you’re interfering with the investigation.”

  “I know my step-brother,” the taste of those words bitter on my tongue, “was not a good guy. He was in with a terrible group of men, and we didn’t associate with one another. We only came to find the birth certificate when we found the other stuff and Virus, I mean, Dean, immediately called you. I just want to do right by my niece, ma’am. Whatever he was involved in doesn’t concern me.”

  “I appreciate you cooperation, I will have to notify the authorities about the girl,” she said and I nod in understanding.

  “I will be in touch,” she says, and we head towards our bikes and straddle them. Before we are about to start them up she calls out, “By the way, I was wondering how you knew your brother…”

  “Half-brother,” I supply.

  “Yes, half-brother, how do you know he’s dead?”

  FUCK! I screwed the pooch on that one, “I saw the news about the explosion and how the Vengeful Demons were there, I just assumed,” before she can ask anything else, I start my Harley and slowly take off back to my home and my girls with Virus right behind me.

  When I get home Elle throws her arms around me, completely frantic, “What are we going to do? They can’t take her away from us, can they?”

  “I will do everything in my power to make that not happen, baby. If they come, just go with whatever I say,” I tell her, holding her looking into her eyes and then bury my face into her hair and whisper, “I’ll make this right, I swear.”

  “I know you will, I trust you,” Elle says and releases a deep breath she’d been holding in, “did you find the birth certificate?”

  I run my fingers through my hair, pulling at the fist I had balled up in it, “yeah,” and take a long, deep breath, “yeah, I found the birth certificate.”

  “What’s going on, what’s wrong?” Elle questions, knowing me so well.

  “Nothing baby, just thinking about how we’re going to keep Brenna,” I tell her and kiss her on the forehead.

  “I know,” she rubs her hand across my cheek, “I know it’s going to all work out. It has to.”

  “Listen, I’ve gotta run and
talk to dad and Remington for a bit. Where’s my other girl?” I ask.

  “She’s upstairs playing with her toys in her room,” she tells me, and I take the steps two at a time until I reach her open door.

  “Hey, baby girl,” I say before stepping in, the weight of the world on my shoulders.

  “What’s wrong, daddy?” she hops up and grabs my hand and looks up at me.

  I pick her up and we sit on the edge of the bed, “There may be some people that come and talk to you,” I let out and sigh.

  “Oh,” she says and looks down at the floor, “I’ve talked to them before. They come and check on me sometimes. Sometimes I have to go live with a stranger for a while. I don’t want to leave you and mommy,” tears well up in those big, beautiful blue eyes and I start to tear up too.

  “I’m going to try my hardest not to let them, Pumpkin. Really, really hard. They may ask how I found you and took you, and that’s going to start a whole lot of questions. They’ll want to know who took you, how I knew you were there. I, I just don’t know what to do or say,” I tell her honestly.

  “You shouldn’t be in trouble for saving all of us. You are a hero for that. They can’t take me away because you’re a hero?” it’s more of a question she asks than a statement.

  “I’m not a hero baby, I just did what was right,” I tell her and hug her like it’s the last time I will get to. “Daddy has to go talk to Uncle Remi and Papa. I just wanted to see you before I left,” I tell her.

  I know it’s not manly, but it’s all I can do to keep the tears away on my way to dad’s. I can’t lose her. Her short little life has been nothing but a shit show, and I’m trying to figure out how to make it stop. I get to my dad’s house and my brother is already there. I walk in and I can see through the sliding glass door they are out back on the deck. As I’m walking through the house towards the door, Michelle stops me and places her hand on my upper arm, “It’s all going to work out,” and lays her head against me near her hand.

  I place my hand on top of hers and let out a sorrowful breath, “I really hope so.”